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I think everyone would agree that the circumstances of HL2's eventual release were... unique. Even then, there are loads of bugs in Bloodlines caused precisely by it being developed on an unfinished engine.

And it doesn't change ZB's main point, which is that one big problem with DX:IW and Thief 3 wasn't the engine but rather the dodgy job the programmers did of rewriting that engine. And it doesn't change that many of the assets weren't very good to begin with, which wouldn't have been different on any other engine.

wasn't there a rough kind of consensuses that flesh was actualy ok? it was just that the game was written for an xbox (aka no memory at all) leading to small levels where a pc could have had the city map be an actually hub, and they decided why bother making water when we could just cut out swimming...

I still maintain that it was a bad engine choice. If it required that much re-writing it wasn't up to the job was it? I'm sure it would have been fine in the hands of another developer that was more capable of doing effective re-writes but it seems that it was the wrong engine at the wrong time.

There is far more wrong with TDS than lack of swimming let me tell you what.

wasn't there a rough kind of consensuses that flesh was actualy ok? it was just that the game was written for an xbox (aka no memory at all) leading to small levels where a pc could have had the city map be an actually hub, and they decided why bother making water when we could just cut out swimming...

No. The consensus was frustration, disappointment, and embarrassment. Throw in some anger. Throw in some resignation and grudging acceptance. But that was after they got excited at the possibilities, some of which were met.

In any case, the problem was them trying to rewrite the renderer from scratch, and all the other incompetent crap they did. Ion Storm Austin just didn't have very good programmers on board for TDS and IW.

Yeah, I don't really understand the thinking there. The entire point, I thought, of using middleware was so you didn't have to do things like writing your own rasterizer/renderer. What's really weird is how much better Splinter Cell looks than TDS/DXIW using the standard Unreal 2 engine. There was seriously something wrong with their tech if you compare what Ion was able to do with other Unreal 2 games.

If they haven't touched unreal engine 2's renderer and uscript, everything would have been fine. Nobody would have blamed them for lack of per-pixel/dynamic shadow features in 2003/2004.

Unreal engine does/did then support swimmable water out of the box, if you don't break it. An engine never prevents you from doing rope arrows, if you know your way around physics and some scripting...Ubisoft China can make grapple hook with the same engine but... ...nevermind...

What's really weird is how much better Splinter Cell looks than TDS/DXIW using the standard Unreal 2 engine. There was seriously something wrong with their tech if you compare what Ion was able to do with other Unreal 2 games.

What is more annoying that fans received very steady unreal editors for any ubisoft game, be it splinter cell or raven shield series. I mean, if only we didn't get a crippled version of it for tds...

Back on the topic, I don't want to see any trailers or teasers or oh-I'm-so-innovative-developer interviews about dx3. Shall we have an editor for the pc version or not will be my main concern.

Taking a torch into a lightsabre dual is a poor choice. Think about it for once.

I agree with ZB. The engine itself wasn't the problem, there were plenty of games using Unreal 2 tech that were able to do more than TDS/DXIW did. The first Splinter Cell and Brothers in Arms used the same engine, had the same Xbox RAM limitations, but managed to avoid the problems that plagued the Ion games.

as others have said, should have this guyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJMGS7l0wT8
Look at everyone doing backflips over a montage of important looking pictures looking like its the opening of some cheap, highschool history video. *tsk* I dunno.
Anyway, it seems that Deus Ex sold like crap on a stick, despite most of the PC gaming internet being in love with it. This is no doubt because it played and looked like shit and ran like a dog. As with Thief, every time they make one of these and it doesn't blow the doors off in sales they want to make the next one have better graphics so every one will notice it from the start, be ahead of the curve instead of behind it this time. Invisible War was coming out at the time when everyone was trying to write in real time shadowing effects and bump maps, so they did too and it practically sank the ship (from what I can gather. Although many forces conspired against that game it seems). Bioshock's about the only LG alumnus sort of game that's managed to look current. So I'm in the camp that says, don't be at all surprised if DX3 is a "shooter".

I feel that with a different engine that required less tweaking they may have produced a game with better gameplay.

Yeah, and Charles Lindbergh should've used an F-22A Raptor to fly across the Atlantic instead of that flimsy one-engine airplane because everyone in Paris was really bored by the time he finally got his ass over there!

Which engine are you talking about SubEff? What other engine at the time supported real-time shadows and ragdoll physics and all the other stuff they wanted in the game? You can't just keep saying they should've pulled another perfectly-working engine out of their asses.

I think the main problem with what they did in making Flesh was that it was rather over-ambitious for the time. Of course, dynamic per-pixel shadows were the future and yes, I think on balance it's perhaps more exciting with them than without, but as Zylon said, Doom 3 came out after TDS, after years of work by Carmack, and I just feel Flesh was probably rushed ahead by less experienced coders trying to optimise this new tech for Xbox, and it didn't work very well.

If they had made it now, when shaders and shadows and dynamic lighting are standard features of most games, and their target platform was 360 instead, it probably would have just worked better. But the whole thing just feels like ISA shooting above their weight.

Which engine are you talking about SubEff? What other engine at the time supported real-time shadows and ragdoll physics and all the other stuff they wanted in the game? You can't just keep saying they should've pulled another perfectly-working engine out of their asses.

He can and he will. Anyone who questions him on this will be accused of thinking one-dimensionally.

Yeah, and Charles Lindbergh should've used an F-22A Raptor to fly across the Atlantic instead of that flimsy one-engine airplane because everyone in Paris was really bored by the time he finally got his ass over there!

Which engine are you talking about SubEff? What other engine at the time supported real-time shadows and ragdoll physics and all the other stuff they wanted in the game? You can't just keep saying they should've pulled another perfectly-working engine out of their asses.

Why are you guys banging on about when the game was made? It's a matter of perspective it seems. You're all hung up on which engine it should have used (if not the Unreal engine) and I'm essentially questioning if it should have been made at the time at all if you require those particular game features, have only that engine and have that particular set of programmers at hand. I'm not suggesting that they should have used a different engine that was available at the time.

I'd like to think of it as brain surgery. If you don't have the right tools, or the right surgeon, or the right drugs all there at the same time you don't do it even if it means the patient will certainly die. There is no point messing it up into an impromptu lobotomy.

For example; they don't make games with streaming levels in a Dungeon Master (for the Amiga) style at the moment because technologically it would require too many other compromises, be too much of a headache and likely mess up.

Of course there were possible remedies to the TDS problems - a different engine (perhaps requiring a wait for new technology or writing an in-house engine), a different programming team or even different expectations from the game. If they'd spent less time with the useless body awareness, 3rd person view and poor City section they might have had time to focus on other aspects of the game and improve it. It's not totally the engine's fault, but for this team and this game I think it is a bad choice, and I have certainly head developers stating that they are now only make game X because the technology that their vision requires is finally here. On more than one occasion.

Originally Posted by Fingernail

I think the main problem with what they did in making Flesh was that it was rather over-ambitious for the time.

Why are you guys banging on about when the game was made? It's a matter of perspective it seems. You're all hung up on which engine it should have used (if not the Unreal engine) and I'm essentially questioning if it should have been made at the time at all

I thought that's what you were on about at first but then you said, on page 5...

Originally Posted by Subjective Effect

I'm criticisingly they choice of engine because it was a bad choice. I'm not suggesting that they should have waited or seen into the future just that the Unreal engine was not suitable for the task given.

And now you're saying that that's exactly what you've been on about all along? Christ, would it kill you to admit you were wrong just once? I promise we won't think any less of you just because you didn't know the exact release dates of Doom3 and TDS.